6 thoughts on “Stock Photos of ‘Career Women’ Totally Trying To Have It All (Rarely Succeeding)”

There is a lot going on in these. However, I did like No. 7, the one where the daughter copies her Mum working at her laptop. It’s cute, and most importantly, it shows that daughters can look up to their mothers for more than cooking, mothering and being pretty. I like how the two are not bonding over shopping or make-up like in many other stock photos (or digestion-enhancing yoghurt, *shudder*), but over the mother’s work like it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to a) have a career and b) be admired for it. The Mum is also not completely stressed out like the others, she appears simply concentrated.

Agreed that it’s nice to have a non-stereotyped mother-daughter relationship. But what really grinds my gears is that 99% of portrayals of working parents I’ve seen feature women, but I also can’t stand that the reams of articles about women who ‘have it all’ always seem to imply that this means having children – what about those who choose not to?

Could someone please explain to me what on earth “having it all” is? I’ve yet to meet anyone “who had it all”, man, woman or any other gender.I thought that was a basic premise in life, that whenever you make the choice to do something with your life you are always simultaneously chosing NOT to do something else.

This really makes me question if I want to have children at all. All this business about how hard it is for women to succeed in the workplace in the first place, then how hard it is to juggle a career and children, then how difficult it is to re-enter the workplace after maternity leave or qutting after having children. To me, having a child seems like a burden, an optional burden.

I would like to understand why there isn’t a single father in these pictures…like seriously. Maybe its showcasing single mothers, I get it. But as a single parent child I did dishes, babysat, laundry. Sure it was a struggle for my mom but It wasn’t ever as down trodden as these pics make it out to be. And seriously! They act like women just pop out babies spontaneously with no sperm at all. There is no childcare structure with regulation, not enough leave, not enough pay, not enough flexibility. The answer to why can’t women have it all is the patriarchy. Getting really tired of the double standards.